From: [doctor 1] at [pofbbs.chi.il.us] (Patrick B. Hailey) Organization: pofbbs - The Politics of Freedom BBS, Joliet, IL (815) 726-4170 > Calling the drug policies of such countries barbarism, well, I wish > that all your family, your children are addicted to heroin and you > see how they burn away their future, and his/her life too. Prohibitionists are not barbarians, nope. This kind gentleman serves as a fine example. You couldn't have picked a better drug to use for an example. While it is addictive, it is also extraordinarily safe. The heroin addict on a maintenance dose needs to take a little extra care with his/her diet to ward off constipation. That is the only known effect on health. Period. Furthermore, the heroin addict on a maintenance dose is indistinguishable from his fellow citizens in every way. There is absolutely no reason that he shouldn't participate in his community, raise his family, or work as an airline pilot. None. It is the adulterated drugs, dirty needles, constant fear of arrest, the inability to work, the need to associate with criminals to get the medicine he desperately needs, and all the other things that prohibition fosters that "burn away their future". So, just to keep in the spirit of things, let me say that I hope you get to watch your family die for lack of an extremely inexpensive medication that none the less you can't get because I happen to have political power right now, and I say you can't have it. Just because. Oh, and I hope you slowly bleed to death, alone, on a cold sidewalk, after being stabbed while trying to get the medicine your family needs from some black market criminal. (Of course, I wouldn't really wish this on anyone. Why do you?) The lifestyle of the addict is the pits. A person has to be pretty miserable to see it as an attractive alternative. Most people are not that miserable, which is why the vast majority of people who try alcohol, cocaine, heroin, or what-have-you do NOT become addicts. Experiments have been done where average people taken off the street were whacked up twice a day with heroin for two weeks. At the end of the two weeks, they did not want more heroin, they wanted their life back. The government had plans to deal with all the heroin-addicted soldiers who were coming back from the Vietnam war. Men who had been using cheap and nearly pure heroin in prodigious quantities for far longer than the several months it takes to ensure addiction. They, too, apparently just wanted their lives back, because the vast majority resumed their lives with no difficulties at all. Whack up, puke, zone out, sleep, wake up, whack up, puke, zone out, sleep, wake up, whack up, puke,... What in God's name makes people think that any appreciable number of people are going to choose to live like that for months on end, long enough to become addicted? Particularly, why would they fear that their own children would choose this as a lifestyle? Do you really know anyone who would prefer to live like this? People are not powerless over drugs. Drugs do not hide out in allys and attack children. People do not find drugs and opt out of life. They opt out of life and find drugs. (I'm talking addicts here: I know many fine people who love life and who occasionally use some drug other than deadly alcohol or nicotine.) Drugs do not cause drug addiction, any more than soap and water cause compulsive hand washing. Most addicts (excepting nicotine addicts) are addicts for less than 10 years. "Treatment" seems to make little difference. The addict finds a job he likes, meets a person who helps him realize that 'real life' can be rewarding and make some kind of sense, and/or has some other experiences that lead up to the day when he wakes up and says to himself: "this lifestyle sucks dead toads". When taking drugs no longer makes some kind of sense, most people stop taking drugs. Ten years is a long time, but it's not a life time. The real tragedy is the people who don't make it that long. The people who are forced underground to live with violent criminals and use poisoned drugs. Or, the people who get sick of the lifestyle but who just can't whip the addiction. If they were treated like the normal people they are, who, like many of us, need to take medication every day, they could get on with their lives. But no, that's not good enough: if you can't lick the addiction, then you're a worthless drug-addicted failure. Finally, what about all the people who *should* be heroin addicts? People with conditions causing chronic pain but leaving them otherwise healthy? Why should they be submitted to endless, sickening, complicated, debilitating drug therapies when they could just use a small amount of some opiate every day and get on with things? Because people like you want to protect the rest of the world from choosing a lifestyle most of us want no part of? Because people like you really believe that everyone (except, perhaps, yourself) are powerless over drugs? More likely because people like you believe all the crap the government and the PDFA tell you about drugs. I can't really blame you for that. But I can tell you that you are woefully ignorant and have been taken for a ride. And I can tell you to wise up. I suggest, first and formost, reading Richard Lawrence Miller's book "The Case for Legalizing Drugs". Thanks awfully, Patrick --- * Origin: COBRUS - Usenet-to-Fidonet Distribution System (1:2613/335.0)